CALEDONIA -- Monte Tolan lost control of his Yamaha and slammed hard into the third-turn wall during the 2004 Soo I-500 snowmobile race in Sault Ste. Marie and lacerated his liver.

Tolan had been through worse accidents during his decade-long snowmobile racing career, but that was the race he decided he had enough.

"After my third trip through ICU, my wife said I was done, and I agreed with her," Tolan said. "I had broken over 20 bones in my body through multiple accidents."

Tolan gave up snowmobile racing, and some might say he was foolish to do what followed. Tolan, who turned 44 on Wednesday, was pushing 40 when he told his wife, Carrie Tolan, in 2006 that he wanted to go stock car racing at Berlin Raceway. Nowadays, that’s considered ancient to break into the sport, but she gave him the green flag.

"I thought it was a lot safer than snowmobile racing because he would at least have a roll cage around him," his wife said.

Late-race heroics gave Tolan his first career Late Model feature win Saturday night in The Chet, one of Berlin’s most prestigious races of the season.

But that’s not all. Tolan’s five-year effort to reinvent himself had paid off.

MONTE TOLAN

Hometown: Caledonia

Age: 44

Family: Tolan and his wife, Carrie, have two children, Jake and Kyra

Occupation: Owns Caledonia Excavating

Car: Drives the No. 33 Port City Racing/Baker Engineering Late Model at Berlin Raceway in Marne

Crew: Pat McKenna and Ken Wobma

Tolan won six Midwest International Racing Association championships during a decade-long snowmobile racing career. Not that the experience of racing snowmobiles would give a driver much of an edge behind the wheel of a Late Model.

"This has been quite a changeover," Tolan said. "With the cars, there are so many more measurements that we have to deal with. With snowmobile racing, it was a lot more my coordination. I could change what the sled was going to do by positioning my body. When I tie myself into the car, I can’t change it. It is going to do what it is going to do."

Tolan isn’t the type to back away from a challenge, so hopping into a stock car for the first time in his late 30s was no problem. Look what he overcame in snowmobile racing. He crashed during a race in Drummond Island in 2001 and broke his pelvis in half and nearly died. He was unable to walk for four months. He needed five operations to repair his foot.

But he fought back to win a MIRA title two years later.

"I had that big crash in 2001, but I always considered myself a professional athlete when I was racing snowmobiles, so I always wanted to come back from injuries," Tolan said. "I wanted to prove to myself after the big one that I could still do it, and I came back in 2003 and won a championship.

"I stepped into (Berlin) and everybody was looking at me and saying why are you doing this at this level? You don’t have any experience on asphalt. But we had a 10-year plan, and we accelerated it Saturday night. We will go from there."

Next up for Tolan is Kalamazoo Speedway. He’s never raced there, but he’s on a roll and his confidence is high.

Tolan’s best feature finish before last weekend’s victory was a fourth place, and that came on July 30, the week before his first win. His plan is to enter Wednesday’s Kalamazoo Klash XIX, and he will participate in Saturday’s program there to tune up for that race.

Tolan passed Tim DeVos for the lead on lap 71 of last week’s feature, but it appeared that his bid for victory was lost when DeVos got the lead back on a restart 11 laps later. But Tolan grabbed the lead back for good on lap 93.

"We went back green after caution, and he was faster than me," Tolan said. "My car didn’t light up good, but I started hitting my marks again. Then I looked up, and I saw I had enough laps. I started to reel him in, and his car made a couple of mistakes, and I was able to slide right back underneath him."